Last week, the first two episodes of the Rings of Power TV series were released to a half-crazed public, of which I include myself. And since the “opening night,” I’ve been thinking of J.R.R. Tolkien’s imagined realms and locales. Reading about these places as a kid was one of the experiences that predisposed me to travel writing. My earliest memory of writing a travel narrative on a word processor was one long plagiarization of The Fellowship of the Ring’s first act, in which the four hobbits make the perilous journey from their hamlet in The Shire to the elven stronghold of Rivendell. I lingered on skirmishes with orcs and the “hewing of limbs,” showing off the finished story to my parents as if it were my own.
But no place in Middle Earth haunted me more than the Mines of Moria—a labyrinth of subterranean passages and halls, carved by the dwarves and overtaken by all manner of foul, cave-dwelling monstrosities. One of the worst dreams I’ve ever had involved being trapped in these caves, chased by legions of cannibals who were pounding war drums, their shapes illuminated on the mine walls with my torch. (Don’t ask, because I truly don’t know where the cannibals came from.) I’d imagine that a lot of us have had some version of this nightmare—being lost in the twisting bowels of the earth and pursued by some hideous progenitor with sharp teeth and a hankering for manflesh.
On top of natural cave systems, America is full of mines—in 2020, there were more than 12,700 active mines across the nation. And mining history is peppered with all manner of ghost stories: apparitions, arms rising from the waters in flooded shafts, and the mysterious sound of pickaxes echoing from mine shafts that are allegedly empty (the entities responsible for these sounds are known as “Tommyknockers.”) But for those who are both intimidated and fascinated by the subterranean realms, visiting a mine can be surprisingly tough. The active ones don’t really allow you to poke around the shafts, and abandoned mines aren’t exactly advertised, given the hazards of unstable rock giving way underfoot or overhead. But on a recent drive through New York’s Hudson River Valley, I stumbled upon a mother lode of ancient mine, unmarked and waiting for visitors in the vast woods at Harriman State Park.
During the 19th Century, the hills of New York’s second largest state park—it contains more than 47,000 acres!—were alive with the sound of miners harvesting iron ore and silver from deep shafts that snaked beneath the woods. But by the dawn of 1900, the mines had been abandoned and the state was eyeing the area as a construction site for a new prison…until a handful of wealthy landowners stepped in and donated hefty portions of their estates to New York, with the intent of catalyzing a new state park. (How often does that happen?!) The old mines of Harriman State Park aren’t spotlit like the serene kayak-worthy lakes. But they’re lurking in the woods, waiting to dazzle and unnerve explorers who seek them out. And that’s exactly what I did this week…